Paul Edmund Wischmeyer
Professor of Anesthesiology

Paul Wischmeyer M.D. is a Perioperative physician who specializes in enhancing preparation and recovery from surgery and critical care. Specifically, at Duke he practices on the Critical Care and Nutrition clinical teams. He serves as the Director of Perioperative Research for the Duke Clinical Research Institute and Associate Vice Chair for Clinical Research in the Dept. of Anesthesiology. He also serves as the Director of the Nutrition Support Team at Duke. Dr. Wischmeyer earned his medical degree with honors at The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, where he was elected into the honor society of Alpha Omega Alpha for outstanding academic achievement. He completed his pediatric internship at University of Colorado Children’s Hospital and his anesthesiology/critical care residency training at the University of Chicago. He also completed a Clinical Pharmacology fellowship and the NIH K30 Clinical Research Scientist Training Program while at University of Chicago.
   Dr. Wischmeyer’s clinical and research focus is in perioperative care, critical care, and nutrition to help patients prepare and recover from illness and surgery. Research interests include perioperative optimization, nutrition therapy, post-illness lean body mass and functional recovery, and probiotics/microbiome. His research interests have also recently been focused on COVID-19 research into COVID-19 metabolism, role of probiotics in COVID19 prevention and treatment, and exercise and nutrition programs to recover from COVID-19 and Long COVID-19. Dr. Wischmeyer’s research group has been awarded NIH and other peer reviewed grants to perform research ranging from basic mechanistic cell work to large-scale multi-center clinical trials in the fields of critical care, perioperative medicine, nutrition, illness metabolism, microbiome/probiotics, and functional outcomes. For his research work and clinical work, Dr. Wischmeyer has received numerous awards from national and international societies including, The Jeffrey Silverstein Award and Memorial Lecture for Humanism in Medicine from the American Delirium Society, The John M. Kinney Award for the most significant contribution to field of general nutrition, the Stanley Dudrick Research Scholar Award by the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition and The Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Parenteral Nutrition Society (IPENEMA) for significant contributions to the field of nutrition.  Dr. Wischmeyer has over 190 peer-reviewed publications in critical care, anesthesiology, and nutrition, including in the New England Journal of Medicine. Finally, he has been an invited speaker at numerous national and international medical meetings delivering over 850 invited presentations over his career. He has an H-index of 63 with over 12,750 citations to his work, including 41 publications with > 100 citations.
    Dr. Wischmeyer passion for helping patients recover from illness and surgery arises from his personal experiences as both doctor and patient in the ICU. Dr. Wischmeyer has undergone over 20 major surgeries and personally experienced multiple ICU stays due to a childhood GI illness that took more than half of his intestinal tract. Thus, preparation for surgery/critical care and recovery from illness are a way of life for Dr. Wischmeyer that he is passionate about teaching his patients and other caregivers worldwide.

 

Current Research Interests

Dr. Wischmeyer’s clinical and research focus is in critical care, COVID-19 care, nutrition, and perioperative care  to help improve outcomes and assist patients in preparing and recovering from critical illness, COVID-19, and surgery. His research interests include ICU and surgical nutrition therapy, perioperative optimization, post-illness lean body mass and functional recovery, role of probiotics/microbiome in prevention of COVID-19, treating illness and improving cognition. Further, we focus on studies of metabolism, indirect calorimetry, novel muscle mass measures via ultrasound and other techniques, and body composition in illnesses including COVID-19, critical care and surgery. Finally, we carrying a range of exercise based and HITT training interventions to improve recovery from illness (including COVID-19), from ICU and surgery. 

Current Appointments & Affiliations

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